3 Best CPUs for 2080 Ti Graphics Card

RTX 2080 Ti CPU Bottleneck

Bottlenecking is a term commonly heard in the gaming PC world. It means one piece of a system is causing the others within the system to slow down.

For example:

Imagine you pair a 2080TI with an Intel Core 2 Duo E4500. Even though the 2080 TI is an amazingly fast card capable of 100s of FPS, you might only get 30 FPS. This slowdown is because the E4500 is bottlenecking the GPU, making the whole system run slower.

The 2080TI is a mighty card, and needs a powerful CPU to go with it. For this reason, I would not recommend going with any CPU slower than the Ryzen 5 2600 or the Core I5-9400. Any slower CPU will cause a significant drop off in performance, and you won’t be using your GPU to its full potential.

Is the RTX 2080 TI better than the 1080 TI?

Simply put, yes it is

But the long answer is the 2080ti is about 30% faster than its last-gen counterpart and includes Nvidia’s new Ray-Tracing.

Ray-Tracing is a sophisticated new technology that makes the lighting in some games appear infinitely better but at a steep FPS penalty.

Best CPU for 2080 Ti

Ryzen 7 3700X

Best AMD CPU for 2080 Ti

While this CPU may not be the fastest one on the entire market, what's lacking in terms of power is more than made up for in value.

While AMD remains the undisputed budget king in most people’s eyes, the i5 9400 outperforms the AMD 3600 in almost all games.

With both processors sporting the same price tag, if it’s purely gaming performance you’re after, the i5 is your best bet.

From a specs standpoint, the i5 9400 comes in strong with six cores, six threads, and a max boost frequency of 4.1 GHz.

Based on Intel’s tried and true 14nm manufacturing process and compatible with Intel Optane, the 9900K can make the slowest of hard drives stupid fast.

As for motherboards, anyone with the B360 or H370 chipset will do fine. The unfortunate part and only downfall of this CPU is that it doesn’t support overclocking. But thanks to cheap motherboards, the overall cost goes down as well.

So, if it’s bang for your buck that you’re after, the Intel i5 9400 is the best option. However, if you’re a fan of Team Red, the Ryzen 5 3600 can serve you just as well.

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How to Choose a Gaming CPU

Choosing a gaming CPU is an essential part of any build as it will affect what kind of motherboard, RAM, and even storage you’re going to buy.

Here are three factors to consider:

Price - When planning a build, I would say a CPU should account for about 15-35% of your total budget. If it’s gaming performance that you’re after, remember that you’re better off spending more money on the GPU then you are buying a better CPU.

Core Count - Having extra cores is always a good thing because they allow you to run more applications at once.

For example, if you plan on gaming, streaming, and listening to Spotify at the same time, then it’s probably wise to look for a CPU with at least eight cores. If you’re purely gaming, however, six or even four cores should suit you just fine. The other thing you see on most CPU’s is the thread count.

Threads are very similar to cores. Most CPUs have hyperthreading, which means that they have twice as many threads as they do cores, but some have the same amount of cores and threads.

Clock Speed - The speed of a CPU is essential to its performance, and there are a few key specs you need to consider.

The first is the base clock; this is the speed the CPU is rated to perform in most light workload situations. The 2nd is the boost speed, which will always be faster than the base clock. The boost clock is the speed the CPU can ramp up to for a short time when it’s under a heavy load like gaming, streaming, or editing.

Overclocking - Lastly, consider whether your CPU is overclockable. Overclocking your CPU can make it run a lot faster and give you way more performance in games.

There are a few drawbacks to overclocking, however. It produces more heat, makes the system more unstable, and uses more power. The faster you go, the worse these side effects get.